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Sunday, 9 August 2015

Gamescom Blizzard Round-up: World of Warcraft Expansion!

One of Blizzard's biggest announcements at Gamescom was the newest and sixth expansion pack for their hugely successful, long running MMORPG. Obviously I'm talking about World of Warcraft. It's newest expansion is called Legion, and will add new dungeons, raids and a new continent, a raised level cap of 110, an Honor system (yes I know it's spelt 'honour' in regular British English), new weapons and even a new Class. Wow that was a mouthful, no pun intended, but let's get into it.

Firstly, the new continent players will be adventuring in is named The Broken Isles, a ruined Night Elf civilisation which has 8 zones to explore and quest through to get to the aforementioned level cap of 110, and the new loot- specifically, the Artifact weapons. There are 36 Artifacts, but only one is available for each class specification. "What's so special about these?" You might be asking. If you were, you should probably stop talking to a computer screen, but these weapons are able to be levelled up while you do.

http://www.wowhead.com/news=248628/legion-artifacts-what-we-know

Artifact power is gained by defeating dungeons and other players in the PVP battles, as well as completing quests which is spent in a sort of talent tree for the weapons which enhance the abilities of them or add completely new ones. Your Artifacts can also have their appearances changed so that they all don't look the same.

As well as new weapons, there is a new Class Order feature which makes you the leader of your class (how there are millions of leaders for each class I'll never know) and you'll have a HQ in an Order Hall. Being a leader comes with responsibilities, and one of those responsibilities is managing your champions. These are reported to be like the followers from the previous expansion, in that they can either accompany you or do special missions which give rewards and bonuses. There are less this time around, meaning it could be more in-depth or they have a larger role in the Order.

There were a bunch of raids and dungeons we were given details about as well. Dungeon-wise, one called Halls of Valor is set above one of the regions in The Broken Isles, another is an ancient elven fortress called the Black Rook Hold and lastly Demon Hunter type dungeon called Vault of the Wardens. In terms of raids two were talked about- Emerald Nightmare and Suramar Palace. The Emerald Nightmare is a nightmare version of a previous raid, the Emerald Dream and will feature 7 bosses. The Suramar Palace features 10 bosses, and you'll be confronting Gul'dan, one of the primary antagonists here too.

The new class will be the Demon Hunter. This class has two specs: a DPS focused spec called Havoc, and a Tank based specification called Vengeance. These new playable classes are able to double jump, see through walls and transform into other forms, to name some of their utility abilities. They have a new resource too; Demonic Fury, and their abilities either generate or use up the resource. Only Night and Blood Elves are able to become this class, and similar to the Death Knight class, it will start at a higher level with a different starting area.

As for PVP, Blizzard is planning to make it less dependent on gear quality, and there will be PVP talents that can be unlocked via the use of the new honor system in the game, which allows them to develop this independently from the other aspects of the game. A Prestige system is also available now, once Honor reaches 50, and will unlock new cosmetics mounts and Artifact weapon skins/variants.

Lastly, if your character wasn't able to keep up with all the new expansions, there is the paid option to boost the character stratight to level 100, like what they did with the level 90 boost in Warlords of Draenor.